[Development] Updating the licence policy for Qt Project

Thiago Macieira thiago.macieira at intel.com
Wed Aug 27 17:26:15 CEST 2014


On Wednesday 27 August 2014 15:55:37 Oswald Buddenhagen wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 22, 2014 at 07:21:38AM +0000, Knoll Lars wrote:
> > 2. New modules that get added to Qt Project from now on can be licensed
> > either under
> 
> for simplicity, i would suggest qt-project states preferences for
> 
> specific options:
> >     * LGPLv2.1, LGPLv3 and commercial or
> 
> of course lgpl2 still makes sense for add-ons hosted outside qt-project,
> and ones where the author explicitly doesn't want digia to make money
> from selling this module (though in this case i wouldn't host on
> qt-project to start with).

Moot point if it's not part of the Qt Project.

> i don't suppose many people would object if we officially discourage this
> option ...

Well, there are still very good reasons to use LGPLv2.1, so I won't pass 
judgement here. Let's leave this to the author to decide.

> >     * LGPLv3, GPLv2 and commercial
> 
> strongly encouraged, for the reasons given by digia.
> 
> >     * LGPLv3 and commercial
> 
> is this really a good idea at this point? the intention would be to
> prevent fully open-source (gpl2) applications that still cannot be
> swapped out by the user (e.g., by requiring signing with particular
> proprietary keys), which is good as such. but with qt's long history,
> there are now many gpl2-only applications which cannot be relicensed any
> more, so they won't be ever able to use these new modules. it's a
> trade-off that needs to be pointed out.

Whether it's a good idea or not, it's irrelevant. It's required.

It's required because we need to link to libraries that are compatible with 
the v3 but not v2. Namely, the Apache Licence v2-licensed code in Android.

Besides, applications from the long history of Qt are not using these modules 
yet because they don't exist. We're not removing any freedom of theirs.

-- 
Thiago Macieira - thiago.macieira (AT) intel.com
  Software Architect - Intel Open Source Technology Center




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